A retired major-general of the Sudan Armed Forces from Keilak in South Kordofan State announced last Friday his defection to the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).

Maj. Gen. Bandar Ibrahim Abu El Baloul, who holds the first-class medal of courage and other military achievements, was born in Keilak, South Kordofan, and was serving as head of the Security and Defence Committee of the Legislative Council of South Kordofan State, before the state was split into West and South Kordofan in 2013.

JEM, a rebel movement belonging to the Sudan Revolutionary Front coalition, was launched in Darfur ten years ago but since has moved many of its forces to Kordofan.

In an interview with Radio Dabanga, Abu El Baloul said that he decided to defect because of “systemic corruption, extreme poverty and a monopoly of wealth by a minority, preference of security and military solutions to resolve the country’s problems, a centralised system of governance, and the use of policies of divide and rule and impoverishment in order to destroy the social fabric of Sudanese society.”

General Abou El Baloul in particular referred to the situation of the Misseriya and Rizeigat nomadic tribes. “They have lost thousands of livestock as a result of the Khartoum regime’s involvement in political conspiracies against South Sudan.”

“They have remained illiterate and poor, to be used as fuel for the regime’s absurd wars,” he contended. He also pointed to grievances associated with the oil extraction in areas traditionally belonging to the Misseriya. “They have not benefited from the oil. They got poverty, unemployment, and a lack of services in return.”

“Due to the regime’s adoption of military and security solutions, the Sudanese armed forces have been pushed into absurd wars to keep the regime’s grip on power. The army forces have not been adequately prepared for these wars. Most of the efforts and financial means supposed to be spent on the army, an official institution, have been spent on paramilitary and security forces,” he said.

File photo: JEM fighters in Darfur (Stuart Price/Albany Associates)